Half Crowns
by Coco-Minu
Summary: This is teaching herself how to disappear completely. Oneshot, ShinoxIno. AU.


Summary: _This is teaching herself how to disappear completely._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Fall Out Boy's _'Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner'_ is possibly one of my favourite songs of all time. It is a shame they split up before coming out with something half decent again. I guess this alludes to something akin to love.

Warning(s): AU. Bad language. Angst. Crack!pairing. Death. Depression.

* * *

_so wear me like a locket around your throat - _

**Half Crowns**

_- __i'll weigh you down i'll watch you choke._

* * *

She waits for him to move as the monitors start to drop.

And Ino presses her hand into the cave that is the tip of his hollow chest, wanting him to sit up and laugh like usual, tell her it's a joke because then this won't be real.

But the monitors flatline, and his heart stops beating beneath her palm.

* * *

He passes her every morning for thirteen days.

And she is there, and she is not. She thinks she is his imaginary friend. Except if she was Shino tells himself he'd never have her that pale, or thin, and she'd fill the silence between them with words because he's not one for small talk. Except if she was, she wouldn't look like she was going to go pall-mall off the edge and leave the world behind. Except, except. So, she exists; and so, he is intrigued.

"Butterflies?"

He can't stop himself. It's like the way that when you witness a car crash. You don't want to stop and stare because it's wrong and yet you do anyway just because it's fascinating and you don't know what else is an option. Hopefully in between the smashed front window and the last palpitating flames of life you'd find something. You can't help but be drawn to disaster. Even if curiosity kills you.

"I knew a beautiful boy, once."

He doesn't need to see her face to know she's beautiful too. When she finally turns to look at him after a moment of silence, he isn't surprised to find that he is correct. She is so stunning it makes his throat ache. But her eyes are soft, the palest shade of blue he's ever seen, and this is what captivates him. Beauty means nothing in this world. Anything can be beautiful to a person looking at it from the right angle.

"Did you love him?"

He asks for no particular reason other than the hint of affection in her voice, and she sucks in her cheeks. They're pasted in red to make her look like she's got colour, but he's no expert and through the makeup he can see she looks even ghostlier than she did from ten paces away. Her lips are painted brightly crimson too, bloody and thin; open like she could gobble him up. A venus in furs. A wolf in sheep's clothing. Her voice is quiet and scraping, like she's been smoking too much or simply just gave up trying to speak anymore when there was nobody there to listen.

"How could I not?"

No, he thinks: she is not leaving the world behind. This is teaching herself how to disappear completely. The worst part, he thinks, is that he feels like he'd be the only one to miss her. He doesn't know her, and nor has he ever before now; yet he wants to tell her she was born yesterday and it makes her perfect. If she'd listen to a stranger. If she could bring herself to care anymore.

"I'm sorry."

He says instead. He doesn't know why he is apologizing other than the fact she looks like she needs someone to do this, but she smiles and although they don't know each other she flings her arms around his neck and holds him close. It doesn't last long, but when she pulls away she is smiling for the first time since he's seen her.

"Thank you."

And on the thirteenth day he is born again.

* * *

She remembers.

She remembers how the ambulance lights flashed the colours of American pride and how she prayed even though she woke up at thirteen and God just wasn't there and how there is no changing this. She remembers hearing that the police got there too late.

She remembers the blood, spilled on the concrete like wings coming from his back.

* * *

The next week he sees her in the library, and she enlightens him.

"Love in itself is suicide."

She says before he can even say hello, and he envisions this as true. Her fur coat is still on in this Indian summer, and everyone is stepping around them like there's a neon sign pointing and stating that she is dysfunctional.

"It's better to have loved and lost."

He half-quotes. She smiles thinly, wary, and readjusts the books piled in her arms. When her sleeve catches on the edge of the book, he doesn't mean to notice the thin lines up her arms. She bows her head in a mimicry of prayer. It's better not to acknowledge that she's just guessing how to breathe. And that's probably just on the better days.

"The people who say that have never been in love."

He stands quietly, not knowing what to say. Once again she's baffled him. Women, Shino had decided a long time ago, were all insane. Apart from the female butterflies in the sanctuary, he had no interest in them. So because he doesn't know what else to do, he tugs down her sleeves for her awkwardly and takes half of her books to carry them for her.

"I don't know you, but if I did, you'd know I've never had reason to."

And when he notices that all the books he's taken from her are police records and reports on violent crime, chronicles of murders, and strangely some books about butterflies; he doesn't say a thing. But once again, she smiles at him, in some sort of gratitude and that makes things alright.

"You're lucky then, if you need a reason."

Reason, Shino's father used to say, was the only thing that made anything important. Without reason, there is nothing to stop anyone from doing what they want just because they can. But as Shino looks at her, he tries to conjure up these words and apply them and just can't. With her, reasons just aren't enough.

"What's your name?"

He manages to find his tongue. It's just occurred to him that he's never asked. He begins to think he shouldn't have either when her eyes go wide with shock. It seems like maybe one day she just asked everyone to forget it so she wouldn't have to remember either. But she when she smiles so beautifully he knows it's alright. People chose to forget her, and when she needed them the most.

"Yamanaka Ino."

She drops the books on the floor by her feet unceremoniously, although it garners her a few awful looks from the people in the general area, and sticks out her bony arm awkwardly. He stares at the open hand in front of him a moment. A gateway to another life. Slowly, he lifts up his hand and shakes with her. A new beginning.

"Aburame Shino. Nice to meet you."

Her eyes flicker for a moment when he tells her his name, but as just as soon as he imagines this look it is gone. People adapt to life, she will tell him later. They learn to smile when they're really not happy, just because if they don't, it feels like the whole world will fall down along with them when they eventually give out. This is why she believes in evolution. This is why she is sure she will die young.

This is why he comes back again the next week and is disappointed when she's not there.

* * *

The first day at the sanctuary, Ino cries.

It's not that the butterflies are dying. Everything dies slowly. From the minute we are born our one certainty is that eventually we will die. She cries because all they have left behind is a pinned up body on display for little kids to poke at. And every death leaves something behind.

He left behind blood and emptiness and her.

* * *

The next time he sees her is at the hospital.

"I hate hospitals."

She says conversationally, covering her wrists with both hands turned awkwardly. But she's not meeting his eyes. Shino is here with Kiba because he's done something stupid again. She's here because she tried to kill herself again. Therein lies the difference.

"You don't have to be sad."

He tells her. Whenever she attempts small talk it's to cover up something she's done, and he's not one to talk much anyway. If he says something, he means it. Ino has never known him, so she doesn't understand this. But she understands that when he peels her hands out of the way to show her newest scars that the world isn't against her and just maybe things are going to be alright. And this is all that matters.

"It feels like if I'm not, he won't have existed."

She answers, but her logic isn't flawless. She's always known that. Just wanting something to exist doesn't make it real. You can cross your eyes when you pray so hard and you can beg something or anything or anyone to make it come back; but it won't. So for now she'll keep his memory like a prize in her head. Remember the freckles on his shoulders and his brilliant smile and that he had a pet terrapin called Ramses because he wanted to study history at university. Never forget what love felt like.

"What was his name?"

He asks, because it's easier then telling her he doesn't want her to die. Death is too permanent for somebody like her. She's already beautiful, but if she tried she could be more than just a tragic pretty face. He can feel it in hid bleached bones. She's rubbed off on him like sunlight, and there's no getting rid of her now. He wants her to be alright.

"Chouji."

At last he understands that flicker of recognition in her eyes from when she found out his name. He remembers how just before Konoha High broke up for the summer, a kid in their year was killed. He remembers the school memorial service where Hinata couldn't stop crying because they were friends. He remembers that he didn't even know the guy, and there was nothing that remarkable about him from the first glance, but everyone said he was nice as is obligatory after a traumatic death. He remembers everyone missing him, and that a blonde girl came on stage at their school and introduced herself as –

"You were Akimichi's girlfriend."

She jolts in her seat. He can remember her in her private school uniform looking down at them from the stage but looking like their school was where she belonged. She'd had the same high cheekbones she had now, the same white blonde hair and the same sparkling eyes and he'd never seen anyone looking so pathetic and alone in his life. He remembers thinking she was a latchkey kid. That the dead boy was all she had left. He remembers not doing anything about it.

"Part of me still is."

She admits. And although he does not know her well, and he shouldn't care this much; he finds himself suddenly very resentful of Akimichi Chouji and whatever relationship he had with her. He finds himself resentful that he died and left someone like her behind. He remembers that last week, his father had told him about the court case drawing to a close soon of Hinata's friend. He remembers that the kid was murdered. Maybe going to the butterfly sanctuary where he worked was her way of coping. Mostly, he's convinced by now that it's just that she was forcing herself to live until the case was over.

And when it finished, she wouldn't be sticking around like he wanted her to.

* * *

The first time she tries suicide is a month after Chouji dies.

It's three in the morning and Daddy isn't at home. He's out at work, or finding another woman to replace the one who left him again, or doing something that he can hope his Princess will be proud of. But it's ok; as long as he's paying for everything she's ever had. Not that she's ever liked the reasoning he gives. She's been thinking about this for a long time. She lines up thirteen little white pills, ready to go out unlucky like she's always been. She's never liked messy deaths. But she wakes an hour later; throwing up and bleary eyed, and cries as she does so.

She can't even get killing herself right.

* * *

Before her, Shino is convinced life is like this:

You are born. You live. You die. The only thing you leave behind might be some ungrateful kids and a couple of friends that will genuinely miss you. There is no point in expecting anything more than this. Everyone forgets in the end. Nobody outlives the rat race.

"You're back."

He's taken to working on holidays in the hope he will see her. Apparently if Kiba's word is anything to go by, Hinata knew her once. They'd been friends until the incident. But times change and she doesn't go out much anymore, unless it's to visit here or try and solve the case for the police or to go to the hospital after her latest attempt at offing herself goes pear shaped. She tells him when he finds the guts to ask that the only thing that ever came of it was a complaint from the cleaner about the blood and mess in the end that she couldn't get out of the cracks between the tiles in the bathroom floor.

"The trial ends today."

Underneath the fur jacket in the boiling heat she's still shaking. He sits next to her on a bench, looking across the room at the butterflies trapped in a net. They've just left their cocoons, yet in two weeks this particular species will die. If she knows this, she doesn't acknowledge it in front of him. Quietly, he laces his fingers through hers in some form of comfort that seems like a foreign concept because it's only after he does this that she cries.

"I'm not going to leave you."

Although she is streaking black eye makeup and thick tanned powder over his uniform shirt as she leans into him, he finds himself not caring. As long as he can hold her for now, he can convince her everything will be alright. It's a shame he can't do that for himself.

"Everyone does. It's just a matter of time."

He cannot admit to fault for being human; and so instead he tries to convince himself that she just needs time to calm down and rubs what he hopes are soothing circles on her back. It's in this time looking at her that he realises he's never been so afraid of losing something.

"Don't try to end your life today."

He says quietly, because a simple _I need you_ doesn't cut it. And you can't be in love with somebody you barely know. But when she clings to his hand so hard, like he's the last thing she has left to hold on to in this world, he thinks that maybe that's ok.

"I won't be leaving anything behind."

It's like the death lingering on his tongue means nothing to her. He hates speaking of things like death and leaving him behind, but she will. She's going to abandon him if she succeeds. Thirteen isn't a lucky number and she's already outlived every other time, but if she does he doesn't know what to do without her.

"Except me."

The reason she's changed him is simple: he's never known how to live before her.

* * *

It's been thirteen days.

Ino is convinced he spoke to her out of pure pity. It took him a while to muster up any reasons he should, she supposes, and weigh out what was right and wrong in perfect neat little columns. Shino never missed anything. Maybe that was why she was scared. All this time while Chouji's not been here, she's wanted somebody to notice her; and now the trial is over and his killers aren't getting away with it in the slightest, and she's wishing that Shino hadn't because that would have made things so much easier. She doesn't want him to know her, and she doesn't want to know herself either.

But she still tips the pills down the sink, simply because she can.

* * *

Thirteen and thirteen. Twenty-six days since she met him, and she's gone.

And Shino feels vague disappointment run through his bones, and wishes it was liquid nitrogen. Explosions. Mutilation. Genocide on a scale large enough to wipe him off this god forsaken planet. Something – anything - would be better than this. It's like the way Chouji left her; except she's much less kind. She almost said goodbye like she meant it.

And then the door bangs open, and there she is, and relief crushes him.

* * *

Ino is bored.

She watches the pills fall down the plughole, into the waterworks. She finds it kind of funny that while she's standing here, they'll be mixing into the water that already had fluorine or fluoride or whatever the fuck was in it; and in about ten minutes they'll dissolve completely like they never existed. Little school kids will get home and drink tap water because mummy thinks it'll make them healthy and get strong bones or something. They're drinking death. And meanwhile, she'll carry on living. And Chouji will still be gone. Life will move onwards in all its mundaity.

But Shino will still be there. That's worth living for.

* * *

They're back at square one.

Just like twenty six days ago, he doesn't know what to say. The words dry up in his mouth like dying moths recoiling from the light. This isn't a storybook where the beautiful girl has tangles in her hair to signify when she lost her virginity, and he's knows in the real world beauty doesn't mean anything anyway except on her. She makes it look fashionable. She makes leaving the world behind an option though, so what can he say? I don't know you, but I want you. I love you all the more for that.

"You know, the world would be crap without you."

Ino tells him, and pats him on the shoulder in a gesture of connection. Through touch, she can tell him anything. He feels the edge leave his body completely. There is nothing he needs to say. She's been filling his mouth with words all along that he didn't even know he could use. Needing is not in his vocabulary.

"I need you - "

He suddenly flings it out in the open. He wants to tell her that without her, he wouldn't even know what the world was like. Let alone be able to gauge if he liked it or not. From what he'd seen until her, he'd disliked nearly everything. Before a girl who was half dead (with no thanks to her own efforts) he hadn't known what it was like to really live. And now he can't stop the words.

"— I really, really need you. It's the kind of need that if I don't know you're ok, I don't know what to do. And I barely know you, I know, but without you I'm lost."

She dips her head so that her long hair covers her entire face, and slowly half covers his hand in hers. She's small, but she's got to be the largest person he's ever known underneath. There is no escaping her depth, once you know what's underneath; you always want to know just a little bit more. She's shaking, though he can't tell if it's because she's scared or what.

"Why do you think I'm sticking around? To see the sights?"

Dry sarcasm rolls from her tongue. And he can't stop himself. He grabs the front of her coat and her head snaps up and he can't help it. He's kissing her. Despite her loneliness, despite anything – it's what he needs to do. Kiss the girl he doesn't know, but he needs. The girl whose habits he's never found out, who appears in spontaneous places like a misguided ghost, the girl who sat in the corner because she didn't know what else to do anymore. The girl who has been almost silent for twenty six days, who he's in love with. Her wide eyes when he finally pulls away betray her.

"Sorry."

He fumbles awkwardly with the word because she's shocked and can't wipe the expression from her face. This is the second time he's ever apologised to her. Write off everything, last time it was to wash her guilt clean; and now it's because he's committed a horrible sin.

"I didn't know."

She finally manages. Neither did he, he thinks, until she walked smack bang into his life with her furry coat and black stilettos and her misery. Ignorance is everyone's best friend when they don't know the person they're gossiping about. And he doesn't really know her either. But they have time.

"Well, now you do."

She sits silently for half an hour before leaving.

* * *

She doesn't return for another thirteen days.

She doesn't even know why she didn't top herself when she had the chance. She just knew that without him, things felt wrong. Like it had with Chouji, and she didn't know what to do about it. Things weren't right. They were beautiful and perfect and she didn't deserve to have someone like Shino need her.

And when she does return, he's gone.

* * *

Shino has always liked art.

Sure, he's not conventionally good at it. But today, he can't keep up the face of being completely brilliant; and even his patience and silence is wearing thin. Kiba from the vetinary science department called in about an hour ago, in an odd show of some sort of friendship. He was friends with Hinata, he said, and she was worried about him. These days, Shino wouldn't even be aware of his own existence if it wasn't for random acts of kindness like that.

"What are you drawing?"

He looks up. His first thought is to ask what she's doing at his university, to ask how she even found him. It's not easy finding an entomology department, least of all one in a university; especially because she didn't even know what he did.

"What are you doing here?"

She sits on his desk haphazardly, looking very out of place surrounded by the equipment of the lab, and not particularly appearing as if she cared about it. Ino in his experience had always been someone to come and go as she pleased. Finding her, he'd come to realise, was much like trying to find a time traveler. Impossible. Unless you knew where to look.

"I stuck around a load of leaflets asking for a boy with big dark sunglasses who doesn't talk much and likes butterflies."

First he thinks she's being sarcastic, but then when she doesn't laugh after telling him this – even with her odd sense of humour and apparent lack of comedic interest – he realises she's serious. He dips his head, not sure he wants to be found anymore. She's never struck him as the sort of girl to do things in half measures.

"I'm drawing wings. They dissected a butterfly today on screen in class."

She flinches slightly at this information. He automatically bites his lower lip. He's always been the sort of person to over analyse everything he says. Talking has never been his strong point, but she's never been a person he would want to cause hurt to.

"I see."

She looks down at the illustration. Ink and neatly filled in labels commenting on the anatomy of a swallowtail butterfly can only say so much.

"You know, I don't really like this."

He grabs a pair of scissors from the nearest rack of them, and snips carefully into the paper. She looks as though she wants to reprimand him for ruining his hard work, but she can't bring herself to form the words to tell him so. She'll always have a soft spot for butterflies, and anything she can fill the silence with won't make any difference; so she resorts to awkward fumbling with her words.

"That was work you'll need to do again."

She mourns it slightly, but he doesn't mind because it's for her. She's come to find him, even though she's not sure she should have; and that's a start. He cuts the wings from the notes, and sticks them together in the center. A paper butterfly. Small and delicate. If he bent his fingers, he'd crush the thing. She's instantly transfixed.

"I want you to have it."

He can never replace Chouji. He knows that. So she can keep Chouji in her heart, in a pocket next to her chest; handmade by him to fit her loving memory. The world is only beautiful if you have somebody to share it with. Even if it's only for a fleeting moment, the freedom the wings give you; that's the best part of being alive. And she gave him it.

"You're the best thing that's happened to me lately."

She kisses him. Head bent forward as he sits at his desk. He's given her a small piece of freedom. Wings. He's helping her run away just by being there, even if it isn't for the best, just because she needs it right now. The evening sun coming through the window is golden and dappling against her skin, and as he pulls away she looks warm in the light and happy. Not the kind of fake forced happy, but truly happy for the first time since he's met her.

And in thirty nine days, for his gift; Shino has been given life in return.

* * *

She waits for Shino at his university gate.

Ino is disquieted. There is always somewhere she does not feel comfortable with, and this is one of the places; it feels too empty. But she hears her name called, and she looks up. The windows are open, and there is a roar of a thousand wings as the butterlies are let out of the science block windows and escape into the sky.

And this time, the boy she loves is still standing.

* * *

So, I guess this is a happy ending.

I haven't posted much in a while. I haven't updated either. Eek. Been busy looking around universities, not that I have much prospect of going to one thanks to Mr. Cameron at number 10 and his sell-out fellows.

**#3 Top Tracks**:

**Crystalised** – The XX

**Where Is My Mind** – Pixies

**I Remember You **– Skid Row

Constructive criticism much appreciated. ~ c:


End file.
